Notes

[1]Central Rada—a bourgeois nationalist organisation set up at a
congress of Ukrainian bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties and
groups in Kiev in April 1917. Its chairman was M. Grushevsky,
and his deputy, V. Vinnichenko. Among its members were
Petlyura, Yefremov and other nationalists. After the Great October
Socialist Revolution, the Rada proclaimed itself the supreme
organ of the “Ukrainian People’s Republic” and took the path of
open struggle against the Soviet power. Some states tried to set
up a centre in the Ukraine pivoted on the Rada for fighting against
the proletarian revolution. France gave the Rada a loan of 200
million francs. The Rada helped the Don and Kuban whiteguard
generals in their fight against the Soviet power, and tried to disarm
Soviet regiments and the Red Guard in the Ukraine. A manifesto
to the Ukrainian people from the Council of People’s Commissars,
written by V. I. Lenin on December 3 (16), 1917, exposed the
Rada’s counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet activity (see present
edition, Vol. 26, pp. 361–63). In December 1917 and January 1918
armed uprisings against the counter-revolutionary Rada swept
the Ukraine, restoring Soviet organs of power. In January 1918,
Soviet troops in the Ukraine started an offensive and on January
26 (February 8) took Kiev and overthrew the rule of the bourgeois
Rada.